Until the Next Life
by vinesse
Summary: Sometimes you have many next lives, and sometimes you have none.


_for kpizkool and sallowsapling_

You're walking down some back country road fifteen miles away from the city of Paris, Tennessee when you see the burning wreckage of a car. You lower your head and keep going, but you glance up and notice the yellow 'Baby on Board' sticker. You know you shouldn't mess with fate, you know you should keep on walking, but instead you drop your backpack and turn towards the car.

The parents are already dead, the front of the car crushed and wrapped around the tree, so you turn your attention to the back seat, peering in through the window. There's two of them, in monogrammed shirts, but the one named Xion doesn't seem to be breathing. You watch for a long second, before ripping the door open and sticking your hands in. You press one against the baby girl's open mouth while you cough at the smoke, then turn towards her sibling when you confirm she's gone.

Roxas has his eyes open. He watches you as you quickly undo his child seatbelt, and stays silent when you carry him away from the wreckage, rocking him and singing an old song you once heard in an old bar in Mississippi, sung by a man who had a voice from god and a upright bass that he played like a fiend. You scoop up your bag as you pass, pausing while you sling it over your shoulder, then you continue walking. You pull a cellphone from your pocket, and dial in to report the crash. You state that there's three dead, but one alive, and he'll arrive at the hospital sooner or later. You hang up on the operator.

You're fifteen miles from the city of Paris, Tennessee, but there's only seven until the next town.

* * *

><p>Seven hundred and six miles from the burning car, a stillborn is brought into the world in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The mother screams and cries, hands pressed against her mouth while she pleads for her baby girl, her precious girl, to open her eyes. The nurses restrain her, murmuring about what a shame, and baby Xion Dewitt, who will never grow up, who will never know of a man named Axel and a twin named Roxas, is forgotten by the world because while some have many next lives, a girl that would have had baby blues the color of an ever-changing ocean and hair the color of an oil spill does not.<p>

* * *

><p>You leave the kid outside a hospital, right before a nurse walks out, and you wait until you hear a shriek of surprise before you disappear into the night.<p>

* * *

><p>Through his life, you keep tabs on Roxas. You don't know what it is, maybe it's the fact you saved him, but you think about the kid constantly. What he's doing, how he's growing up, if his parents, a nice, young Asian couple who can't have kids on their own, are treating him right. You had kept watch all through the adoption process, and had followed the family when they moved to New York.<p>

Right now, you watch the kid, now a strong six years old, through the window of his daycare. It's almost time to leave, and he waits on his parents, and the caretaker with him leaves to go to the bathroom or something like it, you don't care. You step inside slowly, trying to avoid the ringing of the bell above the door, and you crouch beside the blond boy. He looks up at you, and you smile, hoping it's not too stretched across your face, not too scary, because you've seen enough and lived long enough to be scary. He takes it in stride though, and you make a note to teach him about stranger danger.

"What's your name?" Is the first words Roxas Liu, formerly Roxas Schwin, says to you, and you feel the strained smile relax into a real one across your face, your eyes crinkling in the corners like they do when you're truly happy. He cocks his head to the side when he asks the question, and you reach out to ruffle his hair.

"Axel. Just Axel. What's your name, kid?"

Roxas smiles like he's personally discovered the cure for cancer, and you smile right with him, crouching beside the chair he's sitting in. "That's a funny name. I'm Roxas! I'm in first grade, and I've got a dinosaur." He suddenly looks shy, and you resist the urge to ruffle his hair again. The kid looks up from beneath his lashes while you think it should probably be illegal for kids to be this adorable, and asks softly, "You wanna see 'em?"

You nod a yes, and spend the next five minutes playing with Roxas's toy dinosaurs. You let him win the battles, making dinosaur noises with him, only pausing when you hear the bathroom down the hall flush. You kiss the top of Roxas's head, the kid inspires a brotherly instinct in you or some shit, and quietly tell him you've got to go. He protests, loudly, but you tell him you'll come back tomorrow.

You leave, waving at Roxas through the window, smiling encouragingly when his lower lip trembles. You wait until the old woman who runs the place returns before you walk off down the street, hands in your pockets, whistling a tune you once heard in an old bar down in Mississippi, sung by a man with the voice of god and a upright bass he played like a fiend.

* * *

><p>Every afternoon during the week for four years you go to the daycare on the corner of First and Third. Roxas tells everyone about his friend Axel, and everyone laughs and tells his parents he's got a good imagination. You smile when he tells you this when he's seven, pouting with red cheeks and watery eyes, nodding along when he fiercely tells you he knows you're real, you're right here.<p>

* * *

><p>The first time you meet Roxas's parents formally, you're spending the night. Your friend is fifteen, and you thank god you look a young eighteen, maybe even twenty depending on what people want to see. His parents are fiercely protective, and they glare at you while you eat dinner with the family. You fight hard to remain civil, even when they remark Roxas used to have an imaginary friend named Axel, voices low and suspicious. All you do is shrug and say he has a creative imagination, while Roxas glares at you from across the table, leg swinging out to clip you in the knee.<p>

You're damn glad that you manage to avoid choking on your salad, it probably wouldn't make a good first impression.

You spend the night locked away in his room, playing video games and eating chips. He smiles at you like you're the brightest star in his sky, and you nudge your shoulder into his affectionately. You convince him to go to bed around four in the morning, voice rough with lack of sleep, low and tired. He resist for a long time, until you agree to share the bed, saying that neither of you have to sleep on the floor, stop stalling you damn idiot.

You wrap around him in your sleep, arm slung over his waist, the other curled protectively against your chest. He curls into your embrace, soft hair tucked under your chin, and you wake up feeling peaceful for the first time in years.

* * *

><p>Roxas is twenty when you invite him to move into your apartment. He agrees with obvious reluctance, though when you help him move the first few boxes of his stuff into your fifth floor two bedroom setup, he turns to you with a smile that makes you feel like his sun.<p>

* * *

><p>You kiss your best friend the night he turns twenty one. He smiles at you when you pull away, before wrapping an arm around your neck, running his fingers through your red hair, and you press your forehead against his shoulder in shame. He laughs at you before wiggling away, other hand reaching up to trace the teardrop tattoos on your cheeks, and you lean against his fingertips.<p>

"So, do you _like_ like me, Axel?"

* * *

><p>You spend decades with Roxas. You take him to villages in India, cities in Taiwan, ruins in South America. You celebrate his thirtieth birthday in China on the Great Wall, with cupcakes and carton milk. You're in Scotland for his fortieth, and you present him with a feast of local food and flowers, and he laughs hard enough to cry when you recount some of your old stories from this country. By now he looks much older than you, it's obvious, but you ignore the stares you get when you hold his hand in public, and you flip off the assholes you make comments when you kiss him on the corner of his mouth. The two of you don't talk about how you don't age, but Roxas knows, you're sure, but he asks no questions and you give no answers.<p>

He's fifty when he tells you he wants to go home, and you fly back to the States with him for what you think will probably be the last time. You move to South Carolina, buy a house on the countryside where you can always see the sun rise and set from your porch, and Roxas loves you for it. You never travel outside the country again, but you don't mind, or know, for now.

* * *

><p>Roxas is sixty when you start asking to travel again. He refuses, says he's tired and slow now, and you press your head against his chest while he pets your hair. You feel like a child when tears slide down your nose to wet his shirt, but he's getting old, with cloudy eyes that need glasses and hair the color of steel, and you still look an ambiguous eighteen-or-twenty.<p>

The next morning you don't talk about traveling again, and you make his favorite pancakes, blueberry, to feed him in bed, kissing between each bite.

* * *

><p>"Please don't go," you whisper to him. Roxas is eighty six now, and laying in a hospital bed while you hold his hand, studying the veins you can see through paper-thin skin. You kiss his forehead, willing him to stay with you for one more year, one more is all you want. One more year of blueberry pancakes in bed, and looking through photographs of places you've been. "I have so much left to show you."<p>

"You've taken me to every country, Axel." His voice is soft and the sweetest thing you've ever heard, even now, as he lays dying in front of you.

"It's not enough, we didn't get to do everything, there's an entire world out there and it'll never be bright again without you to see it, Roxas, babe, love of my goddamn life, my entire world." Your voice is shaking, trembling like a leaf in the face of a hurricane, and you look at your joined hands, frail fingers mixed with healthy.

He smiles at you, eyes already dimming, and the last thing you ever hear Roxas Liu, formerly Roxas Schwin, say to you is, "I love you more than anything."

You scream like your heart is being ripped out of your chest, and you beg him to wake up, come on Roxas, please wake up. You cry like a child, hands tearing at your hair because you don't think you can live without him. You need him like air and water and light, and now he's gone.

Four thousand two hundred and eighty six miles away, in a small hospital in France, a mother smiles as she's handed her child. Roxas Fremont sleeps without a care in the world, leaning against the warmth of his mother. He has no knowledge of a redhead named Axel Liu, formerly just plain Axel, or a lifetime of travel, or years of undying love, or of a twin named Xion that no one remembers. He does not know that in eighteen years he will meet a redhead man with eyes like green sea glass on the underground who will invite him to a local cafe, and he does not know that this will not the first time, or the last.

For now, he sleeps.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **

wow ok another one done. thank you **sallowsapling** and **kpizkool **for being my inspiration and cheerleaders. like. seriously i love you both.

i hope you enjoyed, and please review! c:

- vin

**{Amissa: He's just a regular old immortal when I wrote this, though I suppose if I want to get into specifics, I'd choose a run of the mill fire demon. Uncreative, I know. I never mentioned it in the story, leaving it up to the readers!}**


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